We needed dinner. We needed to use up some things in the fridge. We were hungry.

Laurel and I created these egg and cheese based turkey lined ‘cupcake’ like things. It was really easy actually. If you’re looking for a quick easy breakfast-for-dinner thing, this is the way to go. Besides the cheese they seem to be semi-healthy too.

Line a muffin tin with 3 pieces of sliced turkey, then add diced onions, shredded (mozzarella) cheese, mushrooms, spinach and more cheese. We added a dusting of garlic powder because we love it so much. Fill with liquid egg whites to keep everything together. We’re not sure about the timing but 350 degrees for about 15 minutes seems about right. Keep an eye on it to be safe. They should come out of the pan with a little coaxing from a spoon.

Then enjoy!

process pictures after the break…

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We finally finished our wedding invitations and got almost all of them in the mail yesterday. They are a perfect metaphor for who we are as a couple. I designed them with a sophisticated look but with cool distressed fonts and fun elements. The main parts are printed on tree-free banana husk paper. The envelopes are natural vellum and the outside wrapper is fine art paper with mango leaves or banana husks embedded in them.

But what is more like Laurel and me is that we were too focused on the little things about the design and missed a few major things. Like the fact that the red card stock was about a quarter inch too short and wouldn’t properly gate fold around our card. Or that the only reason we had to use the card stock in the first place was that we couldn’t find a natural card stock that was thick enough, so we rigged something up with paper from the craft store. Or that we procrastinated until the last minute and then realized that our design was a little complicated, forcing us to glue, fold, insert, label, and stamp 76 of them in two days. In hindsight I wish that I’d made them a little bigger and spent longer looking for some kind of all natural card stock for the gate fold.

Way too many pictures and a cost breakdown after the break.

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It’s that time of year again, garden time! We were distracted last year and had a lack luster harvest. But this year we are both interested in actually growing some vegetables that are worth talking about. So we’ve put in some work on the garden in the last few weeks. I think it could really turn out great this year. We have pumpkins, green peppers, jalapenos, carrots, beets, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, tomatoes, basil, cilantro, and two unknown things in the pot… I’m pretty sure one of them is a tree. To simplify the process I set up a sprinkler at the edge of the garden so all we have to do is go down and turn on the faucet and it automatically gets watered.  Now all we have to do is remember to do that!

more pictures after the break…
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Gentlemen, behold!

Look what I have created!

It’s a hooded sweatshirt version of Cru Jones’ Rad Racing jersey from Rad. I know this movie came out in 1986 and it isn’t even popular enough to be released on DVD yet. But I just wanted one. I wanted it bad. I think it’s the right time for something like this. I don’t know what you call this genre of clothing. Adult costumes you can wear everyday? Costume Hoodies? I’m starting to see them out there more and more. Marc Ecko has a Star Wars line that is really awesome (I own the storm trooper hoodie)  A few years ago I thought it would be a cool idea to print out my own version of the “Rad Racing” shirt from the movie. But then I found that someone else had beat me to it. If you do a search for that now you’ll find a lot of different versions of it.  The colors of this aren’t “movie prop accurate” but I thought bright red and blue would be too much to actually wear on a regular basis, which is what I made this for.  I can’t wait for the first time somebody gets the reference and asks me where I got it.

When I was designing this I had all these grand plans to sell them on Etsy.com. I even thought of two company names, High Art Hoodies or Cult Status.  I thought that if I could sell them for about $75 it would make it worth the effort. Everything was going great until I hit the last step, sewing. It turns out that sewing is hard. I did eventually finish but the quality is on par with Old Navy not Marc Ecko. Luckily I was going for the comfortable soft felt vibe. If I do get some response on this I’ll probably have to find some ways to make the process easier. Like having someone else do the sewing! I do have all the templates for the stars and letters ready, so that will save some time. I’m thinking I could get them laser cut from a fabrication shop and then find out how much a dry cleaners or alteration shop would charge me to sew them on. With this being a limited edition product with a small but dedicated I would imagine that someone would be interested in it.

Get your taste of the thunder after the break… and more pictures.

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The Bosetroopers

When I got the IPhone I stopped using the old Bose headphones. So I decided that I would paint them.  The only problem with this is that I’ve never been able to paint anything that looked good for longer than a week. I set these aside until I almost forgot about them, I pulled them out last night to take a look at them. Turns out I used water based paint in the airbrush and it had already started flaking off. So instead of taking my time and finishing the design with perfection, I descided to whip out the extra-fine paint pen and just freehand it. I took a bunch of pictures because I’m sure that in a week or so these are gointg to look like crap and I’m going to have to do a lot of work to start over.

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This pot is $49.99

But it is ALMOST there. I’ve been using the Amazon wish list for a long time now and I really like it. The addition of the Universal wish list was a great addition, I just have the universal wish list bookmark on the firefox toolbar to add things from other sites. So when it came time to register for the wedding I thought… hmm… I wonder if Amazon has a wedding registry. It does!

We started using it a couple weeks ago and we’ve found some shortcomings with it. First off, While I do like shopping online, there are somethings that I want to see in person. When it comes to choosing a good set of pots and pans I want to hold the handle in my hand and see the finish for myself. I had heard about the iphone app Redlaser which scans bar codes and looks up the prices online on Amazon and Google. So I went ahead and bought it. The first time I tried it out it was amazing… it just worked. I scanned in a set of pans, it looked them up on Amazon and found that they were $30 cheaper online. Great! Then I noticed that you

Laurel as Vanna

can add to the wish list directly from the iphone! Could life get any better? I submit that it could not! But then I noticed something, you can’t add something to the Wedding registry from the Mobile version of Amazon.com (glaring omission #1). So I thought I would just add them to my wish list then move them over later, until I found out later that you CANT DO THAT. (glaring omission #2) So you have to… find the item on the wish list, click on it, re-add it to the wedding registry, then remove it from your wish list.

So what could have been “historically awesome” was rendered “just pretty cool” by Amazon.

In Summary the good things about Redlaser and Amazon are…

• The Redlaser app is historically awesome.
• Amazon Registry works with the universal wish list button.
• The Registry separates the items into categories.
• unique URL for sending out to people.

Bad things…

• Universal wish list items are relegated the universal wish ghetto at the bottom of the page.
• You can’t move items from your regular wish lists to the registry.
• Cant put things on the wedding registry from Amazon mobile.

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